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In a recent paper, McLachlan et al. presented evidence that migration rates of two tree species at the end of the last glacial (c. 10-20 thousand years ago) were much slower than was previously thought. These results provide an important insight for climate-change impacts studies and suggest that the ability of species to track future climate change is limited. However, the detection of late-glacial refugia close to modern range limits also implies that some of our most catastrophic projections might be overstated.

We offer a conceptual framework for managing forested ecosystems under an assumption that future environments will be different from present but that we cannot be certain about the specifics of change. We encourage flexible approaches that promote reversible and incremental steps, and that favor ongoing learning and capacity to modify direction as situations change. We suggest that no single solution fits all future challenges, especially in the context of changing climates, and that the best strategy is to mix different approaches for different situations. Resources managers will be challenged to integrate adaptation strategies (actions that help ecosystems accommodate changes adaptively) and mitigation strategies (actions that enable ecosystems to reduce anthropogenic influences on global climate) into overall plans. Adaptive strategies include resistance options (forestall impacts and protect highly valued resources), resilience options (improve the capacity of ecosystems to return to desired conditions after disturbance), and response options (facilitate transition of ecosystems from current to new conditions). Mitigation strategies include options to sequester carbon and reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions. Priority-setting approaches (e.g., triage), appropriate for rapidly changing conditions and for situations where needs are greater than available capacity to respond, will become increasingly important in the future.

In this report, we lay out a framework for understanding potential impacts of climate change on forestry. This framework draws on a review of recommended actions from forest managers and scientists throughout Canada, the US, and Europe. We then present a toolbox of practices that forest managers in the northeastern US might apply to reduce exposure to the immediate and long-term risk from climate change.

Scarcely a day passes when we don’t hear or read about a new impact of climate change on the environment. Conservancy scientists, practitioners, and managers now find themselves wrestling with how to best adapt our conservation work to a changing climate. Not long ago, many environmental and conservation organizations were reluctant to focus on adaptation over concerns that they would risk drawing attention away from mitigation efforts. This is no longer the case. There is an enormous amount of attention now being paid to adaptation as evidenced by a proliferation of web sites, scientific publications, books, and conferences that address the topic. At the same time, knowledge about impact assessments and adaptation, especially ecosystem‐based adaptation, is highly variable across The Nature Conservancy, and even in the best staffed programs, this is a difficult field with which to stay up‐to‐date. This primer is intended to provide all Conservancy staff with an introduction to climate impacts and ecosystem‐based adaptation, a review of basic definitions, updates on new conservation planning approaches that incorporate adaptation, tools and resources to assist in impact analyses and strategy identification, an overview of ecosystem‐based adaptation in the policy arena, and summary information on adaptation approaches.

We review recent findings from the fossil record, phylogeography and ecology to illustrate that rear edge populations are often disproportionately important for the survival and evolution of biota. Their ecological features, dynamics and conservation requirements differ from those of populations in other parts of the range, and some commonly recommended conservation practices might therefore be of little use or even counterproductive for rear edge populations.

Recent rapid changes in the Earth’s climate have altered ecological systems around the globe. Global warming has been linked to changes in physiology, phenology, species distributions, interspecific interactions, and disturbance regimes. Projected future climate change will undoubtedly result in even more dramatic shifts in the states of many ecosystems. These shifts will provide one of the largest challenges to natural resource managers and conservation planners. Managing natural resources and ecosystems in the face of uncertain climate requires new approaches. Here, the many adaptation strategies that have been proposed for managing natural systems in a changing climate are reviewed. Most of the recommended approaches are general principles and many are tools that managers are already using. What is new is a turning toward a more agile management perspective. To address climate change, managers will need to act over different spatial and temporal scales. The focus of restoration will need to shift from historic species assemblages to potential future ecosystem services. Active adaptive management based on potential future climate impact scenarios will need to be a part of everyday operations. And triage will likely become a critical option. Although many concepts and tools for addressing climate change have been proposed, key pieces of information are still missing. To successfully manage for climate change, a better understanding will be needed of which species and systems will likely be most affected by climate change, how to preserve and enhance the evolutionary capacity of species, how to implement effective adaptive management in new systems, and perhaps most importantly, in which situations and systems will the general adaptation strategies that have been proposed work and how can they be effectively applied.

We reviewed existing and planned adaptation activities of federal, tribal, state, and local governments and the private sector in the United States (U.S.) to understand what types of adaptation activities are underway across different sectors and scales throughout the country.

The impacts of climate change are already being experienced in our community from heat waves and intense bushfires to devastating floods. Despite adaptation being discussed for a number of years, organisations are still grappling with how best to respond to this complex problem.

Net Balance, in collaboration with RMIT and the City of Greater Geelong, has developed an Adaptation toolkit. The Toolkit will assist organisations to prioritise their climate risks and adaptation actions and make climate change risk consideration a part of their everyday operations.

Based on practical experience, the Toolkit takes organisations beyond risk assessments – exploring implications of uncertainty on risk and adaptation actions and supports embedding climate change within the decision making processes.

The Toolkit aims to support organisations to:

Integrate adaptation and support effective and efficient risk management

Be more responsive to climate change shocks and trends form linkages across different work areas, internally and externally

Make effective and consistent decisions regarding climate change.

The Toolkit consists of three tools, stepping the user through key considerations of climate change risks, and potential adaptation actions.

Tool 1: Exploring the Risk Context – explores in detail key climate change risks previously identified. The tool explores the interaction between the risk and their broader social, economic and environmental context. It also outlines a process for considering, overcoming or accepting, and documenting the uncertainty associated with each relevant climate change risks.

Tool 3: Screening for Climate Change Interactions – outlines a process for decision makers across an organisation to consider any interactions between a new proposal/project and climate change risks and adaptation actions.